Indoctrination Is Not Education -- America’s DEI colleges get an ‘F’ on free expression

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America’s DEI colleges get an ‘F’ on free expression
by Jeffrey M. McCall
06/04/25

Another chaotic school year has ended at universities, and the graduates have danced across the stage waving diplomas that are shrinking in significance. Here’s hoping college administrators find time during their leisurely summer breaks to recognize their roles in diminishing the academy, largely because they have lost a commitment to rigorous truth-seeking that can only happen when ideas are freely debated.

Americans should all be concerned about the sad condition of higher education. Confidence in these previously esteemed institutions has cratered. Perhaps the saddest aspect of this decline is that the supposed intellectuals in charge of these colleges and universities have created this crisis themselves. “Enlightened” administrators and boards of trustees have mismanaged what should be among the most productive and joyful places on earth. The root cause of this growing catastrophe is the utter abandonment of higher education’s commitment to free expression and free inquiry.
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The focus of any college or university should be to advance knowledge through intellectual inquiry. That can only happen when free, wide-ranging debate and expression are allowed to examine all perspectives and evidence. Too many institutions today, however, push pre-approved dogmas taught by activist professors who were hired by search committees seeking people with views identical to their own.
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Indeed, the practices and systems of DEI manipulation permeate curricula, graduation requirements, orientation sessions and financial aid.

The irony is that the supposed push for “diversity” has reduced diversity of ideas, thus suppressing free expression in classrooms. Students report in multiple surveys their hesitance to engage in honest debate, fearing repercussions for not wearing the campus ideological straightjacket. A college can’t be fully committed to free expression when it is simultaneously parading around contradictory bombast about preferred perspectives and limiting others based on how one feels.
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Trustee boards need to look at the results of this academic drift and acknowledge that indoctrination doesn’t ultimately work in education.

It is time for colleges to straighten themselves out — not because of government pressure, but because it is the right thing to do in terms of promoting rigorous education and winning back public confidence. The ball can only get rolling with a full return to the principles of free expression and the search for truth.

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